In what, to me, looked like one of the most intriguing titles to come out of PAX '10, Outland has landed on people's radars in a big way. The Ubisoft published XBLA and PSN downloadable features a side-scrolling, platforming world populated by beam saber wielding silhouettes, Shadow of the Colossus styled bosses, and vibrant colors.
The real surprise here, is that Outland borrows it's main gameplay concept from the cult shoot'em up classic, Ikaruga. To sum up the mechanic, I paraphrase Wikipedia's Ikaruga page:
Only attacks of an opposite polarity can kill the player. Same-colored attacks are absorbed. Switching the character's polarity also changes his color, and attacking an enemy using the opposite-polarity is the primary method of inflicting damage.
That about sums it up, loosely. While I'm sure there will be plenty of differences and added complexities, Outland looks pretty much like a side-scrolling Ikaruga, and I ain't mad about that. Developers Housemarque have confirmed that we'll have moments of bullet hell, where projectiles of different colors infest every piece of glorious HD screen space, leaving the player with no option but to color shift, dodge, and man the fuck up.
As what could be the greatest testament to gaming hand-eye coordination, shoot 'em ups have never really had mainstream popularity. Though for those of us that have a dirty little secret love for the underutilized genre, Outland looks to keep us content with it's wonderful shoot 'em up heart and it's sexy side-scrolling body.
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